Mid-Century Vibe: Our New Old Living Room

Since Erik and I started selling mid-century vintage items, we have almost completely transformed our living room. We’ve gone from modern to retro, although it’s not as big a shift as it sounds.

Slowly, we’ve been replacing newer chairs with older ones and finding cool retro lamps. We found a fabulous handmade mid-century combination shelf and desk, which has Erik’s melamine collection on it. Last weekend, Erik got all ambitious and moved around lamps and furniture in the living room until the space matched the vision in his head. It was fun to watch him because I’m typically the one rearranging furniture and I wanted to see what he would come up with.

Last night, thanks to Young Son and his friend, we moved the couch Erik recently found into the living room. It was the last big piece to be replaced. The couch is actually a hide-a-bed and is a heavy beast, but the upholstery is pristine, an amazing feat considering the couch is from the 1950s.

Here’s our new old living room:

The new old couch with surf board table, February 2012.

Two retro chairs with our green Dr. Seuss chair, proving that mid-century mixes well with modern furniture. February 2012.

Handmade mid-century shelf with melamine collection (and a few other non-melamine things). This is the wall on which Erik's bear rug used to hang.

Because we have a dog, we immediately changed the living room after taking these pictures. (He was outside while we were staging photos.) The couch has a heavy canvas cover on it to protect the upholstery from Doggle Woggle. The surf board table was replaced by the museum bench that has been in this location since we bought our other couch. The dog has claimed the museum bench, too, and we didn’t want to freak him out by changing everything comforting in the room.

Also, we’ve sold the lo-boy dresser, so that will be leaving soon, likely to be replaced with a similar dresser.

The great thing about mid-century furniture is how well it’s built compared to most of what’s available nowadays. That hide-a-bed couch doesn’t move an inch when we sit down, unlike our other couch, which is so light that it constantly skates around.

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